Vectra Snags Cylance's Didi Dayton To Grow Partner Services Business

March 12, 2019, 08:08 AM EDT

Vectra has brought in former Cylance channel chief Didi Dayton to boost the services business and integration opportunities for the company's partner community.

The San Jose, Calif.-based cybersecurity vendor has tasked new global channel chief Dayton with building out streamlined platforms for partners internally, bringing best practices from Europe to the United States and developing incentives that reward not just certifications but also relevant services, practices and documentation, according to Vectra.

"We will be recruiting for sure," Dayton told CRN. "We're here to help partners build a whole new practice."

Dayton started March 4 as Vectra's vice president of worldwide channels and alliances, where she will be responsible for worldwide channel programs as well as the broader partner ecosystem. She came to Vectra after 3.5 years as Cylance's global channel chief, where she helped the next-generation endpoint security vendor grow its channel presence leading up to the company's $1.4 billion sale to Blackberry.

Vectra extends detection and response capabilities into the network, Dayton said, leveraging artificial intelligence and deep learning to conduct network traffic analysis and identify behaviors indicative of an attacker. Some of Vectra's capabilities are competitive with Cisco and Darktrace, according to Dayton.

Partners want and need immediate access to a platform when registering an opportunity with Vectra, and expect to receive consistent, reliable, fast support, Dayton said. Navigation of the platform should be easy, include an event schedule to drive demand generation, and provide access to tools and resources for customer demos, according to Dayton.

Vectra's partner program is already designed for the channel to make money on each transaction, and Dayton wants to expand the financial incentives for solution providers beyond certifications and reward relevant services, practices, and documentation that signal partners are taking Vectra seriously.

Dayton said she'd specifically be interested in recognizing partners that have a marketing program, a lead generation program, or branded services. Compensation vehicles available to Vectra to drive more services and market support in the channel include incentive rewards, rebates, and SPIFFs, Dayton said.

"For us, innovation doesn't stop at the product," Dayton said.

Vectra is looking for partners that can provide assessment services, professional services, and managed services around their product, Dayton said. The company is also building out its integration capabilities, and wants solution providers that can deliver integrations with SOAR, SIEM and endpoint security products to provide customers with a complete architectural reference and more visibility, Dayton said.

The company is interested in adding cybersecurity channel partners with networking experience that are today selling managed services and professional services to hundreds of customers, Dayton said. Solution providers working with Vectra should be interested in helping with deep problems around threat identification and mitigation, Dayton said.

Solution providers need to differentiate with their own intellectual property, Dayton said, and Vectra will start by rewarding partners who make a technical investment and provide integration engineering or services engineering around the company's offering.

Although most of Vectra's revenue comes from North America today, Dayton said the company is growing new business more quickly in Europe since partners there are delivering more network assessments and managed services. The company hopes to increase its visibility to the channel in North America through activities like demand gen campaigns and a consistent partner newsletter, Dayton said.

"Keep an eye on Vectra because we're absolutely going to change the way that customers get visibility into their network," Dayton told CRN.